Earth to Welcome Mini Moon on September 29, Scientists Confirm!

Earth was about to get its new mini-moon from September 29 until November 25. According to researchers, the moon's temporary companion, asteroid 2024 PT5, was pulled in by Earth's gravity and orbited the planet. Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, the lead study author, shared with CNN: "In order to become a mini-moon, an incoming body had to approach Earth slowly at close range."

The asteroid was around 37 feet (11 meters) wide and could have had a diameter of about 16 to 138 feet (5 to 42 meters). The mini-moon was not expected to collide with Earth as it orbited about 2.6 million miles (4.2 million kilometers) away, which was roughly 10 times the distance from Earth to the moon. Marcos told Space.com , "According to the latest data available from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Horizons system, the temporary capture was set to start at 15:54 EDT (19:54 UTC) and end at 11:43 EDT (15:43 UTC) on November 25."

Astronomers explained that the temporary visitor was coming from the Arjuna asteroid belt. The Arjuna was made of space rocks that had orbits similar to Earth's, and the objects in the belt were part of the group of asteroids and comets that were close to Earth. Knewz.com noted that the mini-moon was to stay with us until November and then orbit its way back to the sun.

Robert Jedicke, a specialist emeritus on solar system bodies at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, explained to CNN in an email, "Whether an asteroid got captured by Earth was independent of its size or mass; it only depended on its speed and trajectory as it approached the Earth-Moon system." He added, "Almost all the asteroids that approached Earth did so too fast and at the wrong angle to be captured, but sometimes the combined tugs of all the objects in the solar system allowed a particular slow object at the right angle to be briefly captured."

Raul de la Fuente Marcos, an astronomer at the Complutense University of Madrid and a co-author of the study, stated to Al Jazeera , "Every time an object with an orbit so Earth-like was discovered, there was a chance that we were just recovering space debris."

However, 2024 PT5 wasn’t the first asteroid to be captured as a mini-moon. According to researchers, mini-moons, including Asteroid 2020 CD3, were spotted in February 2020. Asteroid 2020 CD3 was categorized as a long-capture mini-moon, while 2024 PT5 was a short-capture one. Short mini-moons could happen several times a decade, but long mini-moons are rare and occur every 10 to 20 years.

Marcos concluded, "The object was too small and dim for typical amateur telescopes and binoculars. However, it was well within the brightness range of typical telescopes used by professional astronomers." He then noted, "A telescope with a diameter of at least 30 inches plus a CCD or CMOS detector was needed to observe this object; a 30-inch telescope and a human eye would not have been enough."